Nick Ferrari

Ignore NHS snoops

Medical records from GP's offices will be sent direct to a giant database - without permission [GETTY: Pic posed by model]

You know the sort of thing, if you give your address when you take a book out from the local library you’ll be tracked by the state for the rest of your days. Or pay for your morning coffee with your credit card and the CIA will be tailing you using a giant satellite the size of a small car, beaming signals direct into your brain unless you wrap your head in tin foil.

However, the new controversial data harvesting process known as “care.data” (as in care dot data) has to be the most invasive medical procedure of the lot and has got me thinking that perhaps “they” are actually intent on finding out everything they can about “us” and, most unforgivably, potentially cashing in on it.

As of next month, all your medical records will be sent from your GP’s ­surgery to a giant central database. This will happen without your permission ­being required, you have to actively “opt out” to prevent it, rather than give your consent to get involved.

Since when did medical procedure ­allow clinicians and other staff to just ­decree what happens to you? Unless you’re in a really bad way, I’d always thought a patient’s consent was required or that of the next of kin.

Not in this Orwellian state-knows-best world.

The driving intentions behind the plan, explains NHS England, are to improve care by identifying areas with long waiting times, inadequate services or substandard treatment but they’ve been forced to concede all the data could be passed on to private organisations, such as health insurers.

Doctors as a breed are not usually seen as a rebellious element but credit to them as the number of doctors speaking out and ensuring their patient have the knowledge about how to opt out grows.

Dr Gordon Gancz, from Oxford, has said: “This goes against just about everything I was ever taught about being a GP, and indeed everything I have held to in almost four decades in practice.”

Dr John McCormack, an Essex GP for more than 30 years, agreed: “My view is that if you are my patient then you own the records. If you don’t want me to hand them over, then I won’t.”

Other doctors have spoken out equally as strongly, but in a sinister and massively disturbing twist, they ask for their details to remain anonymous as they fear it could affect their careers.

Welcome to Stalinist Britain, where no dissent is tolerated. The next thing is you’ll be shipped off to the salt mines if you dare to question any state diktat, such as tractor production going up by record levels.

In a bid to quell growing unease of ­patients as well as doctors, NHS England is stressing how the data will be “anonymised” and all names will be removed. There’s no way on earth, it says, that anyone will be able to work the data back to a patient’s true identity.

It’s worth noting they said precisely the same thing in Massachusetts some years ago but it took a computer student armed with the electoral roll just a short time to put the supposedly secure records alongside the names of the patients ­involved. To dramatically make her point, the student presented the then State Governor, William Weld, with his own files.

To bring it back to Britain, it’s probably salient to remind you all that two CDs containing the private details of 25 million families who have claimed or are claiming child benefits were dispatched by government courier in October 2007 and they’re still on the missing list!

Doctors have been told they will be in breach of the Health and Social Care Act if they fail to supply the information and action will be taken but you still have time to opt out by contacting your surgery and you must.